Patience and Depth
A Practice for Slow Breath
If you’re in New York City, and curious to inspire your creative practice, sign up for November workshops. Explore paper marbling, journaling, and meditating, or book a 1:1 session. Pair all of these experiences with an Odette Press journal, and infuse your week with moments to listen, to breathe, to notice, and to slow down.
In a memory, I am younger, diving in the deep end. The water is chlorine and cerulean, the light a mixture of sun through window and the artifice of fluorescence cascading through pockets of air. Deep breath in, I gulp in air, and then dive, feeling the capacity of lungs, arms reaching forward and strong, kicking, kicking, kicking. In the blue silence, silent and timeless, suspended momentarily in water and memory, I’m holding breath against time, discovering depth, swimming down. I rise, come to the surface again, breathing out.
Memories bubble up to the surface and I resurface from memory into now. Cars pass on slow streets, and daylight rises and fades over gray brick and apartment buildings. The now sky is the same blue as pools of memory, and I feel breath rise and fall in the same body, slowly, swimming through depths of remembering. Deep breath in, a gentle hold, then an exhale. Coming back to presence is a sigh of relief.
Often, when I feel disconnected from the moment, I turn to breathing. Breath is always in the present moment. Body and memory is a landscape, and I remember the nature of the moment by returning to it. There, in the container of lungs, I find a rhythm: inhaling for four, three, two, and one, and exhale for the same, slowly. Presence with breath is a reminder of the moment, and the rhythm is grounding and soothing.
Are we breathing into the depths of our lungs, or staying in the shallow end? A deep breath activates our diaphragms, signaling to the mind and body to slow, entering into parasympathetic activation, or the rest and digest state.
A breath is a reminder of your body in rhythm. A deep breath in, all the way down, into the full capacity of your body like a basin is a recipe for grounding down. A breath transforms us, like wind transforms trees into their winter forms. One slow exhale can calm the mind, and many slow breaths rising and falling over years can amass and build depth and capacity. As Pema Chodron writes in The Places That Scare You, “Transformation occurs only when we remember, breath by breath, year after year, to move toward our emotional distress without condemning or justifying our experience.”
Lungs are containers, space for wind, ingredients for heartbeat. Breathe is a way of being with life. Breathe in peace, and exhale patience into the room, the environment around you. Breathe in tenacity, and breathe out endurance into your mind and body, your communities, and the community of you. Pay attention to your breath as it rhythms through your body, breathe in deeply and slowly, and repeat. The act of repeating is a way of creating, and you are creating each time you breathe. Let your lungs be a place you go to when your inner world needs tending.
Nourished By, Nourishing:
Daylight and deep breathing. Care and community. Learn a meditative practice here. Use sound and color to ground. More on diaphragmatic breathing here.
From a Past Season:
Everywhere Green, a colorway
